Oh oh! It’s that time of the year again… the Manchester Blog Awards are open for nominations again. Here’s the deal:

Cash prizes will be awarded in five categories: political blog, personal blog, arts and culture blog, best new blog and a new category recognising the best creative writing on a blog.

To nominate blogs, send URLs for one entry in each category to mancblogawards at googlemail.com by September 7th 2007. (In order to qualify, writers of the blogs must live within reasonable commuting distance of Manchester. And yes, you can nominate your own blog.) Manchester Blog Awards Director Kate Feld (The Manchizzle) will draw up a shortlist after the close of the nominating period, and the winners will be selected by a judging panel that will include Richard Fair of BBC Manchester and Dave Carter of Manchester Digital Development Agency.

As with last year’s inaugural awards, the event part of Manchester Literature Festival, which now has a blog of its own. The award ceremony (how grand does that sound?) is at the Northern Quarter’s new venue, MohoLive on Oldham Street, on Wednesday 10 October.

Blog readings this year come from lit blogger Caroline Smailes (of In Search of Adam fame) and Fictionbitch Elizabeth Baines, who is also doing a choose-your-own-adventure blog for the festival.

Oh, and there are a couple of blogging workshops on Saturday 29 September: Blogging for Writers and So You Wanna Be A Blogstar (featuring, er, yours truly). Scroll down on the MLF blog post for more details.